Monday, October 25, 2010

Neighbors' Haunts--and Political Signs

For a mobile home park with over 235 units, it may seem hard to imagine that so few

people have decorated for Halloween. But such is the case with the said kind of dwelling in which I live. Today I took a walk around the park today and shot a few photos of some of the few that were decorated with more that a mere pumpkin or two on the window ledge or a just a fake spider web hanging from the porch coverings.

Some were limited to mere pumpkin decorations in the window as seen in the photo at right, but the porch (below right) of this same unit was more somewhat elaborately decorated with the skull face, mini-pumpkins, the witch

hanging from the covering and the big pumpkin hidden behind the brass-looking cowboy boots. I've never met the owners of this home, but I'm guessing that the boots are always on the porch along with the brass-looking cowboy statues. And that other decoration hanging above the porch--its back is to the camera so I have no clue what it's supposed to be.

Not a very fancy decoration, but I could not resist taking a shot of this the green skeleton on the railing of this unit.

Now this next unit (in the photos below) had a very interesting decoration: a fountain surrounded by a pirate skeleton, several skeleton head stakes, a large fake spider, a skeleton with a sign reading SPOOKY. Indeed. This was the most elaborate decoration I could find. Granted, I didn't expect to see every single unit decorated, but there were very few that did not even had a pumpkin in the porch or decal in the window.

I then took a walk across the street and went to view some of the homes behind the

grocery store across the the park. I was a bit tired and did not walk very far, but did manage to get some shots of a graveyard setup in one front yard. The yard was surrounded by a metal fence. The graveyard included light-up pumpkin stakes and RIP headstones.

In that short walk, I seemed to see fewer Halloween decorations than political signs promoting candidates for the upcoming election. As you know, there is an election every year on the second Tuesday in November

and there always seems to be a lot of

campaign signs up. Promoting an upcoming in November election seems to be the next biggest thing in October after Halloween. Being in California, I have over the last month been inundated by TV ads for the California gubernatorial race. I vote by absentee ballots, which I received three weeks ago and filledout and mailed the same day. And in the photos are signs promoting several local candidates for sheriff and the school board of San Benito County. Strangely there were none of these signs in the trailer park. When it's a presidential election year, the election seems to

overshadow Halloween, though the then-current candidates sometime seem to inspire costume ideas for Halloween. This was so the case during the 2008 presidential election. There seemed to be more talk about the race than about Halloween that year. The Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was said to be a popular costume idea, though I did not

see anyone in this disguise. I never see the supposedly popular ones, not that I really wanted to see that one.

This was the most was able to get, as I was a bit tired from work and from not having slept very well last night. I'd been meaning to write on this and even though I was home all day Sunday, rain kept inside the house most of the day.